Securities Industry News articles from June 2006

Securities Industry News archives from June 2006

FSA Bears Down on Best-Execution Requirements: U.K. MiFID document.(Brief article)
June 5, 2006... A Financial Services Authority recommendation that U.K. firms rely on internal or external best-execution benchmarks to comply with the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) is generating concern in the City of London. Firms...

Foreigners Find Chinese QFII Quotas Stifling.(qualified foreign institutional investor)
June 5, 2006... Foreigners are, if anything, more eager than they were a few years ago to invest in China's booming economy, but they are still running up against the strict market-access quotas of the qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) program...

Schwab Moves to Two-Factor: Security as competitive advantage.(Charles Schwab & Company Inc.)
June 5, 2006... Aiming to both keep pace with competitors and keep fraud, phishing attacks and identity thefts at bay, Charles Schwab & Co. said it will be deploying a set of information security products including a two-factor authentication device. ...

A Comeback for Wireless?
June 5, 2006... The imminent arrival of new mobile functionality is going to dramatically increase the usage of wireless devices for investment transactions. That was a familiar refrain at the height of the technology boom, before the 2000-2001 bear...

Chinese IPOs To Return From Yearlong Break.(Securities Regulatory Commission)
June 5, 2006... The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced May 17 that it would permit a resumption of initial public stock offerings after a year of hiatus while major market reforms were put in place. The CSRC also revised its listing...

Carriers Gearing Up for Next Generation.
June 5, 2006... Regardless of whether consumers are ready to pay for it, wireless communications carriers are moving full speed ahead with plans for a new generation of services that they say will revolutionize their business. Sprint Nextel Corp., for...

Merger Advances.(merger of Australian Stock Exchange and Sydney Futures Exchange)
June 5, 2006... The creation of a single equities and derivatives market in Australia has cleared a major hurdle as the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it will not oppose the $1.8 billion merger of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)...

EBS Deal About Done.(ICAP PLC acquires)(Brief article)
June 5, 2006... Along with its announcement last Wednesday of earnings for the fiscal year that ended March 31, London-based Icap said that it expects to complete the acquisition of foreign exchange technology platform EBS Group by today. "Our immediate task...

People In The News.(appointmets)
June 5, 2006... Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) chairman, president and CEO Jill M. Considine, who said last week that she will yield her latter two titles to COO Donald F. Donahue on Aug. 1, has won the Six Sigma CEO of the Year Award in a program...

The Limits of Outsourcing.
June 5, 2006... A funny thing happened on the seemingly inexorable march toward global outsourcing of the back office: It bumped up against the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). In a little-noticed survey released in April, Atlanta-based research firm Hackett Group...

Bernanke II: Moving Basel Forward.(Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Ben S. Bernanke at the conference)
June 5, 2006... This space in last week's Securities Industry News contained the text of a May 16 speech by Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben S. Bernanke on risk management issues related to hedge funds and the complex derivative products that many of them...

Swift and FpML Work on Post-Trade Derivatives Standard.(Swift financial communications consortium)
June 5, 2006... The Swift financial communications consortium and FpML.org have begun working together to standardize post-trade messages in the over-the-counter derivatives market. The effort, under way for about six months, coincides with Swift's attempt to...

XBRL Open-Source Tool Kit Hits Market.(extensible business reporting language by The Kirkland)
June 5, 2006... Growing acceptance of the extensible business reporting language (XBRL) for financial communications and endorsements of the standard from authorities as high-ranking as Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox were expected...

FinCEN Issues AML Guidance.(Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's guidance for anti-money-laundering )
June 5, 2006... The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has spelled out the securities industry's anti-money-laundering (AML) requirements under the USA Patriot Act of 2002. The agency's guidance for Section 312 of the...

Back-Office Prescriptions: Burgeoning credit derivative products get the STP treatment--just in time.
June 5, 2006... The numerical milestone that the credit default swaps (CDS) market passed in 2005--the notional value climbed into double-digit trillions of dollars for the first time, reaching $17.3 trillion at year-end, according to the International Swaps &...

CDS Automation: A Way Forward.(credit default swaps)
June 5, 2006... Will the advent of credit default swaps (CDS) and the back-office upgrades it has prompted be the impetus for the next and perhaps ultimate wave of automation in over-the-counter derivatives markets? Or will what happens in CDS stay within CDS?...

For Icap, EBS Is New, But the Pattern Is Repetitive: Forex deal will push electronic broking' business well past 50 percent.
June 5, 2006... "It changed the face of the company, allowing us to compete on a different level." That's how Steve McDermott, executive director and chief operating officer for the Americas at London-based Icap, referred to the company's May 2003 acquisition...

FX Solutions Brings Rocket Science to Retail Market.(Thomas Plaut and Robert Cortright )
June 5, 2006... Thomas Plaut and Robert Cortright met in the mid-1990s when they both worked in foreign currency for Credit Suisse--Plaut in Asia, Cortright in New York. They shared a common passion--to create a foreign exchange platform that would offer tight...

Barclays' Barx as Good as Its Bite.
June 5, 2006... In a survey earlier this year of 800 financial professionals who use electronic trading platforms, Barclays Capital found that 56 percent wanted more asset classes available to them on a single platform. That's no surprise to anyone following...

SwapsWire Gains From Derivatives Products, Buy Side.
June 5, 2006... SwapsWire timed its 2002 introduction just right. The London-based electronic confirmation network for over-the-counter derivatives has been growing rapidly ever since, filling securities firms' needs to clear away their processing backlogs...

Outsourcing Outside the Cost-Cutting Box: Providers tout transformational' approaches, but they require effort.
June 5, 2006... The now-booming offshore outsourcing industry was built on a foundation of cost savings--cheaper overhead than in the local markets of the user companies. But service providers, and advocates of outsourcing in general, are increasingly...

ATD Moving To Automate Bulletin Boards: OTC bastion seen as ripe.(Automated Trading Desk)
June 12, 2006... Automated Trading Desk (ATD), a high-tech brokerage and market maker that applies sophisticated algorithmic methods to equities trade executions, is extending its systems and expertise into a marketplace that has stayed on the periphery of the...

Google, for its Challenge to Microsoft, Found a Spreadsheet on Wall Street.
June 12, 2006... Traders and analysts all over Wall Street would be lost without their spreadsheet programs, which more often than not are the Excel brand from Microsoft Corp., a staple of personal computer packages. Last week, upping the ante in its rivalry...

Exchanges Emerge As Competitive Challenge to Banks, Says BearingPoint.
June 12, 2006... Investment banks and brokerages have witnessed--and encouraged--the transformation of securities exchanges into shareholder-owned, for-profit enterprises that, according to a new study from BearingPoint, are increasingly capable of competing...

Private-Equity Firm Buys Majority of BondDesk: Retail platform gains investor with a track record--and international contacts.(Advent International Corp acquires BondDesk)(TA Associates)
June 12, 2006... Boston-based Advent International, a private equity firm with a history of successful investments in electronic securities trading platforms, announced an agreement last week to acquire a majority interest in BondDesk Group, operator of an...

ABN Amro in Chinese Futures Venture.(ABN Amro joint-venture between China Galaxy Securities Co)
June 12, 2006... Netherlands-based ABN Amro has established the first joint-venture futures brokerage in China in a partnership with China Galaxy Securities Co. of Beijing, the country's biggest brokerage in terms of assets. ABN Amro Holdings will own 40...

A Push for Penny Options.(Securities and Exchange Commission's Christopher Cox )
June 12, 2006... Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox gave an official boost last week to penny quotations on options. In a letter to the six U.S. options exchanges on June 7, a month after the idea got a thorough airing at the Options...

Derivatives Problems ...(securities trading)(Brief article)
June 12, 2006... Nearly one in five credit derivatives trades by large firms last year initially contained errors, almost double the previous rate, according to the International Swaps & Derivatives Association (ISDA). The group's survey of 67 market makers...

... And Some Solutions.
June 12, 2006... To avoid falling further behind "in a market that is growing 100 percent year-over-year, the level of efficiency has to increase at something like the same rate," Mark Beeston, president of credit derivatives affirmation platform T-Zero, said...

Savvis Splits.(Brief article)
June 12, 2006... Less than three months after averting a Nasdaq delisting because its share price was below $1, Savvis is trading in the $30 range--following a reverse, 1-for-15 stock split effective June 6. The split was not a surprise. "The proxy had...

Raising Capital the Online Way.(Roger Nusbaum)
June 12, 2006... Imagine Roger Nusbaum's surprise when he returned to his Prescott, Ariz. home to find several unsolicited messages from potential investors on his voice mail. Nusbaum, a portfolio manager at Your Source Financial in Arizona, received those...

NYSE's Carter: The Global Competitiveness Argument.
June 12, 2006... In their celebratory June 2 press conference after signing the definitive merger agreement between NYSE Group and Euronext, NYSE chairman Marshall Carter and CEO John Thain returned to a theme they had been sounding for months: that U.S....

Equity Trader Population Will Turn Up: TowerGroup: Demand rises with healthier market; computer skills necessary.
June 12, 2006... It's an explosion in productivity that Wall Street traders and technology managers may be too harried to fully appreciate: The number of U.S. equity traders has declined by more than a sixth since 2000, while average trades per day have nearly...

Bear Chooses Fidelity-Linked Corporate Actions.(Bear, Stearns & Company Inc., Fidelity ActionsXchange)
June 12, 2006... Bear Stearns & Co. has outsourced its corporate actions data-scrubbing process for global equities and fixed-income securities to Fidelity ActionsXchange's ActionService, the companies announced last week. Services such as those of...

Swift's Davies Retiring; Del Col Gets Securities Division Post.(Robert B. Davies will retire from North American Sales Inc)
June 12, 2006... Securities services industry veteran Robert B. Davies will retire June 16 after an 11-year tenure with the Swift international messaging consortium. He will be succeeded as director of North American sales for the securities division by Mark...

NeoNet Signs On to Radianz Proximity.(NeoNet AB will use database access software from Radianz)
June 12, 2006... Agency brokerage NeoNet, which offers buy- and sell-side firms high-speed direct-market access (DMA) to 20 exchanges and other trading venues internationally, said it will use the Radianz Proximity Solution from BT Radianz to facilitate...

ITG Introduces List-Based Algorithms.(Investment Technology Group Inc has launched algorithmic trading tools)
June 12, 2006... Investment Technology Group (ITG) has announced the addition of list-based algorithms to its growing suite of algorithmic trading tools. List-based algorithms allow customers of the high-tech, New York-based agency brokerage to actively manage...

OMX To Upgrade Middle East Exchanges.(Tadawul All Share Index)
June 12, 2006... In two separate deals announced last month, Stockholm-based exchange operator and technology vendor OMX will be building a new trading platform for the Tadawul stock market in Saudi Arabia and upgrading the trading systems at the Dubai...

Pershing Offers Advisers More Manager Choices.
June 12, 2006... Pershing's registered investment adviser (RIA) clients have finally caught up to the firm's broker-dealer correspondents in terms of flexibility to bring their money managers of choice onto the custodian's platform. The capability is...

JP Morgan Turns to Web 2.0 For a Basket Trading Tool.(J.P. Morgan Chase and Company)
June 19, 2006... The dot-com bust is a distant enough memory that some hopeful marketers have slapped a throwback label--Web.2.0--on a new generation of high-tech tools. It's hardly hype to JP Morgan Chase & Co., however. The giant bank is applying Web 2.0...

Makeover for Microsoft Excel: Spreadsheet upgrade plushigh-performance cluster touted as trading's future.(Excel 2007 )
June 19, 2006... Few software products are as widely accepted and ubiquitous, particularly in the securities industry, as the Excel spreadsheet, and now its proprietor, Microsoft Corp., is acknowledging that the technology hasn't kept pace with the demands that...

Compression Ban Is On Hold.(National Securities Clearing Corp.)
June 19, 2006... A proposal by the National Securities Clearing Corp. (NSCC) to eliminate trade compression, a technique that electronic communications networks (ECNs) use to lower their clearing and settlement costs, won't be taking effect July 1 as originally...

Reuters Stakes Derivatives Position With Application Networks Buyout.(Company overview)
June 19, 2006... Reuters Group's trading and technology businesses have been active across asset classes, accelerating its market data feeds to keep pace with algorithmic trading, expanding desktop transaction capabilities around the world and recently...

How Decompression' Could Change the Trading World.(Clearing of securities)
June 19, 2006... If compression of trades is no longer an option, the electronic trading organization will seek new ways to perpetuate the favorable economics that they have been accustomed to since the advent of electronic communications networks. The...

Nyfix Launches Sell-Side OMS.(NYFIX Inc to launch Nyfix Fusion a sell-side trade order management system )
June 19, 2006... Nyfix, the Stamford, Conn.-based executing brokerage and trading technology provider, said it is releasing Nyfix Fusion, a next-generation sell-side trade order management system (OMS) for listed, over-the-counter and third-market issues. ...

Shah, Corporates In.( Yawar Shah)(JP Morgan Chase & Co.)
June 19, 2006... It's annual general meeting time for the Swift financial messaging network, and a flurry of actions has resulted in a new chairman, a new participant category and, like clockwork, price reductions for members. JP Morgan Chase & Co. EVP...

Capital for Igefi.(Summit Partners to invest in Igefi Group)(Brief article)
June 19, 2006... Private equity firm Summit Partners has invested in Igefi Group, the Luxembourg-based provider of the MultiFonds fund accounting and transfer agency software to a blue-chip international customer base that includes BNP Paribas, Citigroup,...

People In The News.(Tradeware Global-David Meredith)(GlobeOp Financial Services-Andrea Dulberg)(Loan Syndications & Trading Association -Ellen Hefferan )
June 19, 2006... Tradeware Global, a trading technology developer poised to capitalize on demand for cross-border transactions, has hired David Meredith, formerly of Thomson Financial, as chief technology officer. It's a newly created position at New York-based...

From Order to Execution Management.(application of tehnology in investment companies)
June 19, 2006... The investment industry is experiencing an increasingly rapid pace of change in both the market and the way in which business is conducted. This creates a challenge not only for traders, but also for the providers of systems and software...

Cox: Cops Are on the Beat.(Christopher Cox)(Speech)
June 19, 2006... Immediately after becoming Securities and Exchange Commission chairman last August, Christopher Cox, a Republican and former California congressman, vowed to maintain the agency's vigilance in enforcing the securities laws and protecting...

Inspector General Report Puts Heat on FinCEN: Treasury agency found lacking in database capabilities and controls.(Financial Crimes Enforcement Network)(Bank Secrecy Act of 1970)
June 19, 2006... At the end of a report by the Treasury Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on efforts by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to manage anti-money-laundering (AML) data under its Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) mandate,...

AML Exec Small Leaves Citibank.(Richard Small has left Citigroup Inc)
June 19, 2006... Richard Small has left Citigroup, where he was director of global anti-money laundering (AML) and a sometime critic of U.S. AML legislation, to take a similar position at General Electric Co.'s GE Money, a smaller consumer financial services...

Trial Run for Big Board Market Data Product.(NYSE Group Inc.)
June 19, 2006... The NYSE Group started a free 60-day trial last Monday for its new market data product, NYSE InfoTools, which is described as delivering to retail and institutional investors "unparalleled" levels of transparency and detail for trading and...

Paladyne Adds Prime Brokerage Client.(Paladyne Systems )
June 19, 2006... Hedge fund IT shop Paladyne Systems has signed its first prime brokerage client, Credit Suisse, whose customers will have access on a private-label basis to as many as six Paladyne products to manage their relationships with the investment bank...

ASF Crowd Bullish on ABS Derivatives.(American Securitization Forum )(asset-backed securities )
June 19, 2006... Opportunity and information are available in greater depth in the asset-backed credit derivatives sector than in the cash bond markets, according to Nunzio Masone, the structured product manager for Aladdin Capital Management, a Stamford,...

Matching People and Technology: How automation and market pressures have changed the personality and culture of the prop desk.
June 19, 2006... Over roughly the same period that trading technology has undergone a revolution, a new generation of proprietary trader has emerged that bears little resemblance to its predecessors. As Shawn Banerji, an executive director in New York for...

Sell Side Pours Dollars Into Capacity, Connectivity.
June 19, 2006... Over the last several years, a wave of electronic enhancements and innovations has swept across the trading cycle. Automated platforms generated higher trading volumes, which in turn required faster and more efficient processing and analytical...

Market Data Needed--And Faster, Please.
June 19, 2006... The huge growth in proprietary trading might never have happened without recent advances in low-latency market data feeds for the latest generation of electronic trading platforms, whether in cash equities or in the other asset classes that are...

Hedge Fund Asset-Class Demands Raise Stakes for Servicers.
June 19, 2006... There was a time, not so long ago, when providing clearing, settlement and custody for investment assets, regardless of where a client executed its trades, was enough to call a service "prime brokerage" and keep the rich fees rolling in. No...

SIA, BMA Quiet About Merger; Some Open Questions Remain.
June 19, 2006... Three years after a failed attempt at a merger, the Securities Industry Association (SIA) and Bond Market Association (BMA) are giving it another shot. This time, their constituents in the equity and fixed-income markets are confident they will...

Elsewhere in Town: Thain, Nazareth At the Big Board's Regulatory Show.
June 19, 2006... On the cusp of the U.S. securities industry's premier annual technology conference, the independent regulatory arm of the New York Stock Exchange will hold its second annual conference today and Tuesday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York. The...

Business Is Looking Up, Vendors Act Accordingly: Though still tempered by budget constraints, optimism about technology and innovation.
June 19, 2006... If financial services technology can be said to be a growth business, it's of the steady-state variety. Securities firms' budgets for information systems, communications and related services and support are rising on average by 4 percent to 6...

Sybase: Can Breadth Trump Specialization?(Sybase Inc.)(Eric Johnson)(Interview)
June 19, 2006... Only a few technology companies are in the class of database giant Sybase when it comes to spanning the corporate enterprise software market. In common with the likes of Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp., Sybase views financial services,...

Intel: Wanting to Be Noticed--Up to a Point.(Intel Corp.)(Eric Doyle)(Interview)
June 19, 2006... At least three news developments mentioned elsewhere in this issue of Securities Industry News had an element of Intel inside--to borrow one of the semiconductor giant's branding slogans. The Santa Clara, Calif. company signed on as a...

Bracing for MiFID: Vendors see a classic case of regulatory pain and complexity yielding opportunity.(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive )
June 19, 2006... As buy- and sell-side firms scramble to keep up with the operational and IT burdens of pending European best-execution rules, vendors on both sides of the Atlantic are gearing up for the challenge--and a potential revenue bonanza. Chip...

Platform's Latest Version Goes Real-Time.(Platform Computing Corp.)
June 19, 2006... Saying that it has completed testing with several of the world's top financial institutions, Platform Computing Corp. this week is announcing a new version of its Symphony grid computing software with real-time capabilities to meet fast-paced...

Smart Searches Find Their Way to Wall Street.
June 19, 2006... The more information sources available in electronic form, the more difficult it becomes to sort through and make them truly useful. The issue is being addressed by a number of recent product introductions from search technology companies. ...

Vendors Combine Real-Time and Historical Analytics.
June 19, 2006... Faster and more flexible processing of analytics using real-time and historical data will be a prevalent feature of the high-speed market data products on display at the Securities Industry Association's Technology Management Conference this...

Asset Manager Ixis Using Pyxis' mWholesaler.(Ixis Asset Management Advisors Group)(Pyxis Mobile )
June 19, 2006... Wireless investment software specialist Pyxis Mobile has sold its mWholesaler system to Ixis Asset Management Advisors Group, giving members of the firm's retail sales team remote access to customer relationship management and other enterprise...

Accenture Buying Consulting Firm Random Walk.
June 26, 2006... Global giant is anticipating demand for custom software Random Walk Computing, a consulting firm that is a mainstay in the Wall Street technology community, has agreed to be acquired by global consulting and outsourcing giant Accenture. The...

In Eastern Europe, Exchange Mergers Aren't Automatic.(Prague Stock Exchange )
June 26, 2006... In common with its counterparts to the west, one of Eastern Europe's largest bourses, the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE), is undergoing a major transformation. But in this corner of the emerging-markets world, exchange mergers aren't on the...

TradeWeb Changes STP Approach to Lure Derivatives.(electronic fixed-income trading network )
June 26, 2006... CreditXpress available to firms not using execution platform In what Jim Toffey, CEO of Thomson TradeWeb, characterizes as a change in business model, the electronic fixed-income trading network is making a run at the post-trade corporate...

BofA, Three Others Buy Into Chicago Exchange.
June 26, 2006... The Chicago Stock Exchange's parent company, CHX Holdings, said last week that it has agreed to sell minority stakes to Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns & Co., E-Trade Financial Corp. and Goldman Sachs & Co. for a total of $20 million. The...

People in the News.(Securities Industry)
June 26, 2006... In his career journey from Market Vision to OptiMark Technologies to Global Crossing, William F. Adiletta has never ventured far from the technology of trading connectivity. Two weeks ago he was named president of TekFinancial Solutions, a...

Global Adoption of Electronic CDS Trading.(electronic trading of credit default swaps)(Brief article)
June 26, 2006... Pressure to cut costs and mitigate operational and regulatory risk will be the biggest impetus to electronic trading of credit default swaps (CDS), according to "Overview of the Credit Derivatives Market: Looking for the Missing Link," a report...

Sunlight on Swift.(united states legal counsel)(Brief article)
June 26, 2006... The Swift network's place in the global financial infrastructure is no secret to banking and securities industry executives. Swift is now getting general public attention as never before thanks to a New York Times report Friday that its...

Guest Comment: Facing Globalization.(trade show)
June 26, 2006... As it did last year, during the same week that the Securities Industry Association was holding its technology management conference in New York, the regulatory arm of NYSE Group, NYSE Regulation, held its second annual conference for securities...

Trading: In Derivatives Growth, OTC Outpacing Exchanges: TowerGroup.(over the counter)
June 26, 2006... But the two sectors are complementary, and there's plenty of business to go around Volume growth in over-the-counter derivatives is outpacing that of exchanges, and Dushyant Shahrawat, research area director for securities and capital...

Compliance: Hedge Funds Top Worry List for NYSE Regulators.(Big Board regulators )
June 26, 2006... The mission is changing at NYSE Regulation, the self-regulatory body that operates as a not-for-profit company separate from the New York Stock Exchange. As recently as last year, Big Board regulators were citing risk assessment, gifts and...

Asset Servicing: Hedge Fund Risks Increasingly Complex, Say SIA Panelists.(research firm Tabb Group report)
June 26, 2006... The hedge fund party is in full swing. Assets under management have ballooned from $1.5 billion in 1969 to more than $1.2 trillion today, and research firm Tabb Group sees that hitting $2 trillion by 2008. Yet risk clouds are gathering,...

Operational Risk as Hedge Fund Investment Criterion.(The Bank of New York)
June 26, 2006... BNY joins with consultant in urging closer attention to systems and infrastructure Investors should evaluate the strength of a hedge fund's operations and the measures it takes to mitigate operational risk before deciding to invest in it,...

Asset Servicing: Swift Underscores Multi-Asset-Class Direction in 2010 Strategy.(Swift international messaging cooperative )
June 26, 2006... With its 2010 strategy document, released last week, the historically back-office-focused Swift international messaging cooperative said it is seeking to improve its standing at the front end of the trade cycle and in alternative investment...

Trading: Orc Links to FXall, Hotspot By Alexa Jaworski.(Orc Software)( Hotspot FX)
June 26, 2006... Stockholm-based trading technology company Orc Software, which connects its 400 customers around the world to more than 100 markets and trading venues across asset classes, has added connections to two leading foreign exchange platforms: the...

Instinet Launches Algorithm For Seeking Hidden Liquidity.(Instinet Group Inc.)
June 26, 2006... Agency brokerage Instinet is announcing today that it is offering a liquidity aggregation algorithm, dubbed Nighthawk, that simultaneously accesses most major pools of dark liquidity, including Liquidnet H20, Nyfix Millennium, Pipeline Trading...